What is the Parents Forever™ theory of change?

Families face divorce, separation or custody changes in different ways. They also experience different outcomes, depending their risk and protective factors.

A theory of change is a type of logic model that clarifies why and how a program like Parents Forever™ results in improved outcomes.

Parents Forever™ seeks to improve resiliency by:

Reducing individual and family-level risk factors.

Increasing individual and family-level protective factors.

Parents Forever™ affects change through three primary channels:

Parental well-being.

Parent-child relationships.

Coparenting relationships.

Find out more about how these three channels are impacted and how they affect child and family well-being.

Parental well-being

Just as children are impacted both positively and negatively by family transitions, adults are too. A central tenet of the Parents Forever™ program is that parental well-being matters.

Parents who possess greater resilience during and after the divorce and separation process can draw on a greater wealth of emotional, psychological and material resources as they parent and coparent their children. Greater resources to draw from increases the likelihood of:

Successful and effective parenting.

Successful and effective coparenting.

Better outcomes for children and families.

It is not enough to focus on parental well-being as a pathway to child well-being. Parental well-being should be addressed in its own right. Stronger parents make stronger communities. Through this emphasis, we further the Extension mission of “ensuring Minnesota communities are strong.”

Following are some examples of research on the effects of divorce, separation, or custody change on parent well-being.

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Type of study: Followed adults over time and focused on those in the sample who divorced between 2004 and 2010 (n=6,639; Sharma, 2014)

Results:

Divorce was found to have a negative financial impact on both men and women in later life.

Women experience a greater negative lifetime financial impact. Women experienced an average decrease of $376,000 in total wealth. In contrast men experienced an average decrease of $146,000 in total wealth.

Results: Parents whose relationship dissolved experienced a greater increase in symptoms of depression than compared with parents whose relationship remained intact. This was true for both marital or cohabitating relationships.

Type of study: Overview of published research (Conger, Conger, & Martin, 2010)

Results: The psychological adjustment of the primary custodial parent (or both parents if custody is shared equally) is one of the strongest predictors of outcomes for children.

Parent-child relationships

Divorce, separation and custody change can affect the relationships parents have with their children.

Sometimes these impacts reflect coparenting agreements. For example:

When parents have joint physical custody, they may be caring for their children alone for the first time in their lives.

Coparenting agreement may limit the amount of face-to-face contact they have with their child. This could impact their parent-child relationship.

The parent-child relationship is one of the key ingredients to helping children successfully manage a family transition. Positive parent-child relationships are considered protective factors for children through a variety of life stresses. They are extremely important to children’s healthy development.

Following are some examples of research on the effects of divorce, separation, or custody change on parent-child relationships.

Results: Youth experienced less closeness with their fathers and more closeness with their mothers. The authors interpreted this finding in light of the fact that a vast majority of the young adults lived with their mothers following the divorce.

Type of study: Overview of published research (Warshak, 2014)

Results: Although controversy exists about the minimum age to allow overnight stays, significant contact with both parents following divorce is strongly encouraged for healthy child development.

Results: Children who have nonresidential fathers who engage in positive parenting practices, and multiple forms of child-related activities, do better socially, emotionally, academically and behaviorally than children who do not.

Coparenting relationships

Coparenting typically refers to the relationship between primary caregivers of a child (often parents). It can be expanded to include any adult figure with legal, financial, and emotional responsibility for child-rearing. Coparenting may look differently given different family circumstances. It can span from being extremely engaged and collaborative, to being more distant and businesslike relationships.

The research in this area has grown extensively over the past 20 years. What we now know is that the coparenting relationship is a unique and powerful contributor to child and family well-being. While healthy coparenting is clearly a positive for children, there is a word of caution. It is important to only encourage such relationships when it is safe to do so. In family contexts of domestic violence, coparenting should not be encouraged until it is clear that it is safe and recommended for everyone involved.

Following are some examples of research on the effects of coparenting relationships on child and family well-being.

Results: Mothers who reported more positive coparenting also reported increased financial child support payments from fathers. This was a reciprocal relationship. Increased child support payments also predicted improved coparenting, but this was a much smaller influence than coparenting had on payment.